Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 88918 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 296(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88918 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 296(@300wpm)
“Sure.” Van reclined on the couch bed, with an arm bent behind his head.
“What’s it going to be, Lucia? The easy way? Or…” He tightened his fingers against her throat, cutting her airflow. “The hard way?”
She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t pry his grip away. The urgent need for oxygen grew stronger and more desperate, but did it really matter? She was alone in the darkness save for the strong grip around her throat. She couldn’t think of a better way to die than fading beneath his beautifully ferocious eyes. But those eyes were traps, the possessive gleam in them compelling her mouth to soundlessly form two words she’d held back.
“What?” He yanked his hand away, freeing her. “Say that again.”
“I’m dying.” She wheezed, clutching her throat as her attention snagged on the paling sky beyond the window. “Shit, I have to go.”
“Dying?” He exchanged a startled look with Van then scanned her up and down, pausing on her midsection. “How? Is it your injury from the crash in Peru?”
“I don’t know.” It was a terrible truth, one she should’ve figured out by now. “But if I’m not where I’m supposed to be by dawn, I won’t get my medicine. And if I don’t get that injection, I’ll be in respiratory failure by lunchtime.”
He went still. So still the air around him thinned and charged, sweeping over her like a blanket of static and raising the hairs on her arms. He looked floored, volatile, teetering on the brink of eruption.
“Tate—”
“You’re telling me you’re terminally ill.” Denial flexed at the edge of his voice.
“Yes.”
“But you don’t know what’s wrong with you?”
“No, I… I don’t know the medical diagnosis.”
“How can you not—?” He swiped a hand down his face and glared at her. “Tell me the symptoms.”
“I don’t have time for this.”
His eyes were as deep and turbulent as the ocean, his lips perfectly arched despite the pressed line of disapproval. Muscles twitched across his bare chest and broadcasted his impatience. But it was his demeanor that demanded her attention.
He rendered her immobile simply by standing there, looking utterly self-possessed and cavalier, like a saintly king or a gallant warrior. Or a sociopath. Whatever it was that made him so damn compelling seemed to glow like a backdrop for his powerful legs, broad chest, and brutally gorgeous features.
He was strong enough, assertive enough to take her burdens so she wouldn’t have to carry them by herself. It was his presence that spoke to her, commanded her at a cellular level, and she obeyed.
“The symptoms vary, but what I experience most is chronic nausea, abdominal pain, hematemesis, migraines, bradycardia, tremors, ataxia, seizures, muscle paralysis…” She released a breath of exhausted pain.
“Fucking Christ.” He lowered his head and squeezed the bridge of his nose. Then he was staring at her again, his expression dangerous. “Are you experiencing any of that tonight?”
“Some, yeah.”
“Told you she was too thin,” Van said from the couch.
Tate tossed him a warning glare and softened his eyes as he looked back at her. “Badell gives you medicine? It helps?”
“His doctors developed a treatment. The injection is the only thing keeping me alive.”
“Did he tell you that?”
“Yes, and I know what you’re thinking.” With trembling hands, she snatched her guns from the table and holstered them in her waistband. “Sometimes he lets me see just how close to death I can get. I’ve tasted it, Tate. Felt its icy breath suck the life from my body. Have you ever experienced that? The abject, black void of extinction? The dismal nothingness? There’s no bright light at the end of the tunnel. There’s no fucking tunnel. When your heart stops, there’s nothing.”
“You’re leaving with me, Lucia. Right now. We’ll go directly to the hospital.”
“I’ll be dead within hours. Long before they can diagnose me.”
His nostrils flared. “Badell knows what’s wrong with you?”
“Of course. As long as he keeps my condition a secret and the antidote locked in his safe, I can’t leave.”
“Have you tried to find—?” He swore under his breath. “That’s why you asked me if I was a doctor.”
Tiago owned every medical practitioner in the neighborhood. Moonlighting at the sex club twice a month was her only opportunity to furtively search for visiting doctors. She just hadn’t had any luck.
“If I had more time…” She glanced at the window, where the graying sky signaled the coming of dawn. “I’d tell you all about my attempts to escape, my failed visit with a doctor, and the bloodshed that followed.”
She strode toward the door, opened it, and wobbled on the threshold.
“You can’t fix this, Tate. Go home. And tell my sister…” Keeping her back to the room, she swallowed the heartache shredding her voice. “Tell her I’m already dead.”
Forcing one foot in front of the other, she walked out and closed the door behind her.
CHAPTER 11